Boots & Spurs
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LOOK TO THE FUTURE. HONOUR THE PAST
ike many members I ticked that we should ‘Focus on the future’ in last year’s survey That is certainly what those who formed the Club in 1894 did and I think we should honour that and seek to emulate it as best we can. I’ve been researching and writing about aspects of the pre-1939 socialist movement in Britain, including the Clarion, on and off since the 1970s, so I should be able to sum up the ethos of the paper and it’s cycling club quite easily. But I still find it hard; mere words seem inadequate. But I will try to give my interpretation. See also the ‘history’ page on the national website. First we need to understand what ‘socialism’ meant in the 1890s when the paper was launched at the end of 1891 and our club in 1894. Nowadays it can mean anything from Bernie Sanders’ ‘democratic socialism’ to the appalling dictatorship of Kim Jong-un in North Korea. Back in the 1890s things were simpler. At a time of deep class divisions when all women and about a third of men were still denied votes in parliamentary elections the main preoccupation of the paper was the promotion of democracy and equality and opposing oppression of all kinds. There is still, clearly, a great deal to do about all of this but whereas in the 1890s few
apart from socialists would support such aims nowadays many, perhaps most, people in Britain would at least claim to believe in these values. The Clarion approach was social and cultural rather than political. However imperfect the world was we should anticipate the sort of society we would like to live in by, as far as possible, living it every day. There was, and is, a lot to be said for just getting out on your bike enjoying the company of your fellows and trying to make ‘Fellowship is Life’ a reality. Don’t wait for Utopia to arrive; anticipate it as far as possible. Enjoyment of life was not only for members of the club and readers of the paper. I wrote a short piece for the last Boots and Spurs about Cinderella Clubs. In those days Sunday schools promoted Christianity, the socialist Sunday schools of the period tried to produce little socialists. But the Cinderella clubs were simply focused on giving poor kids the sort of good time that more privileged kids enjoyed with free trips to the seaside and other treats. It was assumed that if you treated people right they would end up with the right sort of beliefs and attitudes. What was unique about the Clarion was the promotion of such a wide range of social and cultural activities on a
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